The VSTOL Support Ship (VSS) was a proposed light aircraft carrier design for the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

in the late 1970s that would be smaller and less expensive than the Navy's existing aircraft carriers such as the . The design would cost one-quarter as much, although the

V/STOL A vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft is an airplane able to take-off or land vertically or on short runways. Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft are a subset of V/STOL craft that do not require runways at a ...

aircraft it would carry would have reduced performance. The

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

and others supported the design, but it was ultimately rejected by the Navy.

Development and design

In the early 1970s, the

Chief of Naval Operations The chief of naval operations (CNO) is the professional head of the United States Navy. The position is a statutory office () held by an admiral who is a military adviser and deputy to the secretary of the Navy. In a separate capacity as a memb ...

(CNO),

Elmo Zumwalt Elmo Russell "Bud" Zumwalt Jr. (November 29, 1920 – January 2, 2000) was a United States Navy officer and the youngest person to serve as Chief of Naval Operations. As an admiral and later the 19th Chief of Naval Operations, Zumwalt played a m ...

, proposed that the US Navy build the

Sea Control Ship The Sea Control Ship (SCS) was a small aircraft carrier developed and conceptualized by the United States Navy under Chief of Naval Operations Elmo Zumwalt during the 1970s. Currently the term refers to naval vessels that can perform similar d ...

(SCS), a small aircraft carrier equipped with helicopters and

aircraft such as the AV-8A Harrier which was intended for convoy escort operations.Gardiner and Chumbley 1995, p. 575. The austere SCS design was heavily opposed by factions within the US Navy, including Admiral

Hyman G. Rickover Hyman G. Rickover (January 27, 1900 – July 8, 1986) was an admiral in the U.S. Navy. He directed the original development of naval nuclear propulsion and controlled its operations for three decades as director of the U.S. Naval Reactors offic ...

and much of the Naval aviation community and plans to purchase the SCS were rejected by the US Congress in 1975.Friedman 1983, p. 354. Zumwalt's successor as CNO,

James L. Holloway III James Lemuel Holloway III (February 23, 1922 – November 26, 2019) was a United States Navy admiral and naval aviator who was decorated for his actions during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. After the Vietnam War, he was poste ...

abandoned plans for the SCS and instead proposed a larger and faster design, the VSTOL Support Ship, or VSS. By June 1976, it was planned that the VSS would be long and would be powered by four

General Electric LM2500 The General Electric LM2500 is an industrial and marine gas turbine produced by GE Aviation. The LM2500 is a derivative of the General Electric CF6 aircraft engine. As of 2004, the U.S. Navy and at least 29 other navies had used a total of mor ...

gas turbines driving two propeller shafts (essentially double the machinery of the single shaft SCS) which would give a speed of . It would carry 22 helicopters (16 H-53 Sea Stallions and six LAMPS light helicopters) together with four Harriers.Friedman 1983, pp. 354, 356. Holloway hoped to develop a series of advanced V/STOL aircraft, including a supersonic fighter and a utility aircraft for Anti-Submarine and Airborne Early Warning duties which could operate from the VSS as well as from the Navy's existing carriers, although these types were never fully defined. The need to accommodate the new designs resulted in the carrier's design being reworked in February 1978 as the VSS II. This design had a larger hangar and greater

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

than the original design to allow the potentially larger advanced aircraft to be carried, and carried substantially more aviation fuel.Friedman 1983, pp. 353, 356. A third variant, the VSS III, evolved by July 1978 as a result of a requirement to protect the ship's

magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...

s. In order to cope with the extra weight of the armor, the ship had a new hull form with less

freeboard In sailing and boating, a vessel's freeboard is the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, measured at the lowest point of sheer where water can enter the boat or ship. In commercial vessels, the latter criterion measured relativ ...

but allowing greater speed.Friedman 1983, p. 356. The final VSS III design was

long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, an ...

and at the waterline, with a beam of and a

draft Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to: Watercraft dimensions * Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel * Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail * Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vesse ...

of .

Displacement Displacement may refer to: Physical sciences Mathematics and Physics * Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...

was light and full load. As well as the ship's aircraft, two quadruple

Harpoon A harpoon is a long spear-like instrument and tool used in fishing, whaling, seal hunting, sealing, and other marine hunting to catch and injure large fish or marine mammals such as seals and whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the t ...

anti-ship-missile launchers were to be mounted on the

fantail Fantails are small insectivorous songbirds of the genus ''Rhipidura'' in the family Rhipiduridae, native to Australasia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Most of the species are about long, specialist aerial feeders, and named as " ...

, with two

Phalanx The phalanx ( grc, φάλαγξ; plural phalanxes or phalanges, , ) was a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar pole weapons. The term is particularly ...

Close-in weapon system A close-in weapon system (CIWS ) is a point-defense weapon system for detecting and destroying short-range incoming missiles and enemy aircraft which have penetrated the outer defenses, typically mounted on a naval ship. Nearly all classes of ...

s were to be fitted. A complement of 49 officers and 910 other ranks were to operate the ship while the ship's air wing had 87 officers and 541 other ranks.Friedman 1983, p. 353.

References

All Hands ''All Hands'' was a monthly published magazine of the United States Navy for its sailors. It had been published since August 1922 under different names; the current title was established in 1945. Its last issue was published on December 2011, alt ...

, July 1976, a

* * * * {{Cite journal , last = Hart , first = Gary , authorlink = Gary Hart , title = The U.S. Senate and the Future of the Navy , journal = International Security , volume = 2 , issue = 4 , pages = 175–184 , publisher = The MIT Press , date = Spring 1978 , jstor = 2538464 , issn = , doi =10.2307/2538464, s2cid = 153892886 Ship types Aircraft carriers of the United States Navy Cold War aircraft carriers of the United States Proposed aircraft carriers Cancelled ships of the United States Navy Presidency of Jimmy Carter

Development and design

See also

References